How do you think looking for a job or career is similar to or different from looking for a lover or life partner?

I’m interested in improving the way I approach both of these tasks and often sense that there is an overlap. But I realize that my sense that they are similar might be a reason why I’m not as successful with either as I could be.

Comments (6)

The big thing the two have in common is that the more self-knowledge you have, the more success you’ll have. Most people who are good at one have the capacity to be good at both but they choose to focus on just one. Both a career and a spouse take tons of focus and time to do right.

If you are bad at both then you are probably lacking in self-knowledge — you don’t understand how other people see you so that you can manage that better. You need to know who you are so you see how people are seeing you. And then you need to change what you want to change in order to be the person who can get what you want to get.

A good place to start is personality type. It’s an objective way to see who you are and how people see you. Here’s a link to take a personality test:

so what should a person do if they’re an ENFP and work at a super boring job where people expect you to be quiet and “normal”? lots of people assume ENFP’s are “crazy” or dumb, because ENFP’s think out loud – and “outside the box” and that makes people uncomfortable.

ENFPs know that most people think they’re nuts, so when you date someone whose charmed by your nuttiness, that person is a keeper. Also, you probably want to be with someone who is more steady and predictable than you are. So you are probably in the right job to find a mate. Anyone who is at your office who likes you is both steady and predictable (maybe you’d call that boring) and appreciates you.

Dating tip for ENFPs: Be careful what you call boring. The thing that’s really boring is someone who is so unreliable and unsteady that you don’t know who they are.

Some things I learned from doing courses on each personality type:

1. Even INFPs think ENFPs are nuts. That made me laugh.
2. In the INTJ course almost all the men who were married were married to ENFPs.
3. In the ENFP course dating was one of the issues people wanted to talk about most. So you are not alone in your concerns about being an ENFP in the dating pool, and you should take the ENFP course to get a good plan.

Hi ellen and Penelope! ENFPs are amazing. My parents are both ENFPs, and my classmate is also an ENFP. It’s impossible to be bored with an ENFP.

Meanwhile, I have the opposite problem since I am INFP. My need to be alone is so important that I don’t see the point for dating unless it’s to marry and have children. But I don’t want to have children just for the sake of having them. Maybe these things are not as important to me.